Adaptive Leadership: The Heifetz Collection (3 Items)

6

Give the Work Back

You gain credibility and authority in your career by demonstrat-

ing your capacity to take other people’s problems off their shoul-

ders and give them back solutions. The pattern begins early in

school as children receive positive reinforcement for finding the

answers, and continues throughout life as you become an in-

creasingly responsible adult. All of this is a virtue, until you find

yourself facing adaptive pressures for which you cannot deliver

solutions. At these times, all of your habits, pride, and sense of

competence get thrown out of kilter because the situation calls for

mobilizing the work of others rather than knowing ...